Oliver Schwarz, developer, agile professional and software architect near Cologne, Germany

We are regularly having an early breakfast with our friends on Christmas Eve. We all have our own families so it's nice to sit together as friends for once before we all go onto our visiting trips in different directions and meet with our larger families. This year I tried to bake some Brioche. It took me a few attempts to bring it to perfection, but I want to share it with you here.

Brioche

Make sure the ingredients like eggs, butter, yeast and the milk are lukewarm if not slightly heated. It will help the yeast to let the dough expand to quite some degree - which is important if you want to have that moist, fluffy & delicious bread later. The whole run will take you about 20 minutes of work and about 2 hours in total - plan some time for the Brioche to cool down if you want to bring it to the table fresh.

Ingredients

500 g flour, type T550
21 g fresh yeast (you may use 7g dry yeast, but to me it seemed that fresh yeast has a better effect on the dough)
100 ml lukewarm milk
4 size M eggs (room temperature)
5 g salt
40 g sugar
100 g soft butter
1 egg yolk for brushing the Brioche before going into the oven

Run-through

Mix the lukewarm milk with the 4 eggs and stir them
Put in the salt, the sugar, the flour, the butter and the yeast
Set it up in kitchen machine and let it work the dough for ~8 minutes on low settings (use the dough hook)
Let the dough rest for 45 minutes in a warm environment (if necessary, put it in the oven at ~30°C)

Now the dough needs to double its size. It took me quite some attempts to achieve this. To get it running I had to ensure that the ingredients are really warmed up (not directly from inside the fridge) and I had to put the dough in a warm place (I heated up the oven very short to be a little bit more than room temperature and put the dough there for a minute). If the dough has doubled its size, continue.

(I mean, this sounds like common sense, but it took me some time 😜)

Take the dough and cut it into 4 pieces of similar size. Flatten each piece and then roll them. Use some butter to prepare the loaf pan, then put all 4 rolls next to each other into the pan. Let it rest for another 20-30 minutes (it should expand even a little bit more). Preheat the oven to 170°C. Use some egg yolk to brush the surface of the dough, then put it into the oven for 30 minutes.

Have some jam ready, peanut butter and chocolate cream will do the trick. Enjoy some easy, delicious breakfast!